


A Moment Too Late

by space_kid (orphan_account)



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Abuse, Angst, M/M, Piano, Self Harm, Smoking, Suicide, Teenlock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-16
Updated: 2015-02-16
Packaged: 2018-03-13 05:19:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 968
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3369278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/space_kid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was a summer that should've been a lifetime but instead felt like a day, when he met John Watson for the first time, all damaged and paper thin. His hands were shaky, and Sherlock tried desperately to keep his grip.</p><p>And in an instant, lost it all.</p><p>3 months to learn, love, and lose.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Moment Too Late

The smoke is dense, and floats aimlessly around his head in a dizzying way. He stops trying to track it's pattern, content on absorbing all it's terrible qualities. His mind is momentarily erased from the honking of traffic and the screaming gunshot left in his brain from the summer. Sherlock looks forward to his window, noting the setting orange sun and filing it away somewhere in his mind where he'd dredge it up for a later time. He looks down from nature to the keys before him, black and white, porcelain seemingly. His fingers twitch at the sight, and with a cigarette dangling from his mouth, he begins to press the keys softly, mind mesmerized by the sounds and patterns he was creating from seemingly nothing.

It was so easy, so simple. The movements, the music, the feeling, the joy was so effortless, Sherlock often thought he was doing it wrong. His music, his life, himself, they were so pure, so _perfect. ___

Everything John Watson was most definitely not...

Sherlock abruptly stopped playing, harshly slamming his finger, down on the keys with a clatter. He brought his head down to the edge of the instrument, shutting his eyes tightly, bringing his hands to his hair and tugging hard. He forced himself to stop thinking about that.... boy... who was most definitely in the past now. John Watson, so broken, so tainted, yet so beautiful for life. He was truly impossible, that boy, the way his mind function, the way the cards of life were shuffled. He didn't know what it was like, to see him for the first time, small, fragile, lost in every definition. He was innocent and debauched all at once, a chaotic mess.

Sherlock grits his teeth at how John's fucking _voice _enters his mind, singing along to old radio longs, long discussions on brick walls with cigarettes and so many fucking fireworks in the sky. They were quite a pair, those two sun bathed California kids with scars running blood deep.__

John's scarred wrists, Sherlocks gripping the skin in his palm, harshly running over gentle white slashes, some pink with newness. John sighed, the exhaled laced with fatigue.

"4 today..." He says slowly on the brick wall, dangling legs, a shared cigarettes. John pulls it to his lips, breathing the chemicals in. "Dad was yelling, skin itched, same drill."

Mr. Watson may possibly be he devil to Sherlock. He is stern, angry, fierce, the epitome of fear among small children. After the divorce of his wife and the removal of his only daughter, he turns to his only thing, John, wearing down his defences, esteem and perception until a gush of wind will knock him down into an abyss of cuts and smoke and pain.

It was very possible Sherlock loved John as he thinks back on those months on his piano bench, very real indeed. He never kissed him, held his hand, never even touched with romantic intrest, yet his need to protect that hurricane was strong and feral.

"It'd be so easy to end it all... to go from blinking and breathing to a pile of blood and shit, another sob story for the 11pm News..." John said.

"But it's not even about dying..." He starts again, dragging again, "more like sleeping forever... disappearing..." John chuckles with disgust, flicking the old cigarette into the shrubbery below. Sherlock's eyes roam over his body, taking small details like darker bags, skinnier body, messier hair. He was decomposing before his own eyes, wasting away inside a nervous system and bone prison. Sherlock looked away quickly.

He pressed a key, then another. Three months to love him, one day to lose him. He talked that day at their spot on the wall, spraying a smiley face onto the muddy concrete in harsh yellow. A sick joke, a 'fuck you' to God. They climbed, John seemingly normal in the duration of the expedition. He sat then, up and tall.

"I'm going to die today," John says, deadpanned. Sherlock looked over at him, eyebrow arched.

"And I'm not gonna do it like the movies, locked in my room, slit in a rage. If I'm going down, I'm going down fucking _blazing." _He chuckles. "I think I'll jump in front of people, wear a cape or some shit... perhaps going swimming and 'drown,'" John says, somewhat dreamily. Sherlock should've said something, anything, but he remained silent. John glanced at him.__

"You'd go to my funeral, right? Pray to God, reminisce on my stories, tell everyone I was a joy?"

So broken, so bent.

He presses another key, another, and another. They could be something, but Sherlock makes them nothing. He can almost hear the fireworks outside, booming as he and John smoke on a wall. He wanted to be a doctor in the army, he said. Help people, others. He could've been kind and gentle, but he was sharp and witty, stony and blank. He had eyes of a veteran, and a body of an easel, adorned with scars of the mental and physical variety.

Of course he played piano for John, in his house, at 11pm when he saw it on the news, 16 year old boy, takes his own life, jumping from a building. He wore a cape. The notes flew out of him like a stream, flowing around the room with sleek precision. He could never recreate it perfectly, but he tried hard. _Capes. _Sherlock liked the title.__

What they could've been, he wondered. A family, children, house. Together. Impossible John, impossibly broken and insane.

He stands once again, dragging once, before looking out to see the city below him at twilight. It's so simple, so free. Maybe fireworks will appear... it is the New Year after all...

What they could've been, was a goddamn tragedy.

**Author's Note:**

> FEB 21: how does this have so many reads so quickly? This was litera lly a spur of the moment, no stopping kinda one shot, and you guys seemed to like it alot, so thank you all so much <3 ;)


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